Why spend money sending your child to a private "Christian" school when public and charter (also public) schools are free?Part 2

Part 1 of this series focused on higher academic achievement in private Christian schools when compared to public and charter schools.

However, the primary reason to choose cost-based Christian education is not solely academic but also ideological.

Adolf Hitler said it this way, “Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.” This statement demonstrates the intrinsic effect that education has on the minds of our children. Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC commentator and professor of Political Science at Tulane University, says that your children belong to the community when she says, “We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.” She states that your children belong to the community at large. Although she may have altruistic intentions in her comments, the underlying ideology in her statement is growing in today’s society.

That ideology would say that there is no God and to educate with God as the central figure in all things, is to be closed-minded, perhaps even dangerous. However, the Bible never gave the government or “the community” the mandate to educate our children. Rather, God gave that responsibility to the family, your family.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 depicts how the family is central to the education of the children and God is the central figure in education. The child is to learn about God in all areas and all facets of life.

Since God is the Creator and Sustainer of all things (Rev. 4:11, Col. 1:17), then it makes sense that education is actually the pursuit of God through understanding His creation and how it works in order to fulfill the biblical mandate in Genesis 1:26-28. We refer to this as a “biblical worldview”. In other words, we believe that the goal of education is to instill a biblical perspective through which students see the world and everything in it. This includes themselves, their purpose, and their life’s goals. Tim Keller summarizes this concept:

Farming takes the physical material of soil and seed and produces food. Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life. When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing, when we push a broom and clean up a room, when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity, when we take an unformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject, when we teach a couple how to resolve their relational disputes, when we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art we are continuing God’s work of forming, filling, and subduing . . . [and] we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development. (Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, New York: Dutton, 2012, p. 59).

Neil Postman, in his book, The End of Education, writes that, “behind every educational effort is the pursuit of a god, or gods.”

The problem is that Government funded education, including both public and charter schools, exists as a secular institution with a secular ideology and worldview. This worldview is built on Atheism, or the belief that God does not exist. Therefore, to explain the world around us one must look inside one’s self to arrive at any feasible conclusion. The theory that public education relies on to frame its worldview is the theory of evolution. This theory forms the foundation of thinking and learning in all public education curriculum.

These worldviews exist in stark opposition to one another. In their book, Children at Risk, James Dobson and Gary Bauer state it this way, “A great civil war of values rages today...two sides with vastly differing and incompatible worldviews are locked in a bitter conflict thet permeates every level of society...A struggle now is for the hearts and minds...the war is not fought with bombs and bullets, but with ideas.”

Choosing a Christian school is an ideological decision. In doing so, a family is saying that they reject the secular worldview of public education and rather choose an education for their children which places the pursuit of God as its central tenet.

This does not mean that education at Ocean View Christian Academy takes place in a bubble. Rather, through the instructional program, ideas are presented and analyzed to shape an apologetic biblical worldview. In all classes, students are encouraged to think, reason, analyze, and draw conclusions in an environment that promotes Truth.

Ocean View Christian Academy exists to come alongside of families who desire to educate their children with a biblical perspective.

To schedule a tour of our campus, feel free to contact us at 619-424.7875. ​